This invention relates generally to subsystem for a network printing system and, more particularly, to a graphic user interface in which two or more graphic elements are employed to transfer a set of print jobs from a first print queue to a second print queue.
In accordance with a standard model of network printing, a job is developed at a workstation and delivered to a printer, by way of a server, for the purpose of executing the job. An example of such standard network printing modeling is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,493,634 to Bonk et al. (Issued: Feb. 20, 1996). This printing model is appropriate for those situations in which the printer is well suited for printing the job in accordance with certain criteria required by the system user. For example, if the user expects to have a selected number of prints generated within a certain time frame at a selected location, and such criteria is met at the printer, then the user is satisfied. If this criteria cannot be met, however, a certain degree of customer dissatisfaction may be ensured.
To avoid this sort of customer dissatisfaction, a distributed printing model of the type disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,287,194 to Lobiondo ("Lobiondo") (Issued: Feb. 15, 1994) has been proposed. Lobiondo discloses a printshop management scheduling routine and system which provide optimum scheduling of print jobs on a network. The scheduling routine utilizes the total complex of printers available at a local location and/or remote locations to allocate and complete print jobs based on a plurality of criteria, including requested completion time for the project. If requested completion time does not allow printing of the print job by a sole printer, the print job is allocated to a plurality of available printers, each printing a portion of the complete print job.
Examples of "job type criteria" referred to in Lobiondo may include "selection of media format, size, number of copies, completion time, etc." Various systems suggest the advantage of splitting up a job and sending the resulting portions to a plurality of printers. In the October, 1995 edition of the Hardcopy Observer (published by Lyra Research, Inc.), at p. 15, a multiple printer arrangement, known as "MicroPress" is described, in part, as follows:
Like any spooler, PressDirector's "MicroSpool" spooler takes files in, stores them until the RIP is free and sends them on to the printer. But T/R systems has added many unique functions to MicorSpool, the primary purpose of which is to make multiple desktop color lasers act like a big laser. PA1 The key MicroSpool feature is called "electronic collation." After the software rasterizes a job, the resulting pages are stored as compressed bitmaps on the system's hard drive. Then a "parsing" process sends the pages out to the available engines in exactly the right sequence so that when the printing is done, the stacks produced by each engine can be placed on top of each other to create a complete multi-copy job with separator sheets inserted between copies. "The software looks at the job and parses it so that all four engines start and finish at the same time," says Daly. "It's very involved technically. There's a big, big algorithm." PA1 The product that Entire has developed is called the Image Manager. Conceptually, the Image Manager is very similar to the T/R Systems MicroPress (Observer 10/95) which uses a PC-based server to drive multiple Canon desktop color laser engines as if they were a single high-speed virtual machine. The Entire technology does the same thing, except that it is designed to drive multiple HP LaserJet 5Si monochrone lasers.
A product similar to the above-described MicroPress is referred as follows in the December, 1995 edition of the Hardcopy Observer, at p. 69:
In contrast to the above-discussed distributed printing models in which the job appears to be partitioned on the basis of at least one job level attribute, e.g. prints produced per unit time, a Xerox Disclosure Journal article to P. F. Morgan (vol. 16, No. 6, November/December 1991) entitled "Integration of Black Only and Color Printers" contemplates an approach in which portions of a job, developed on the basis of page level information, are delivered to a plurality of printers. In particular, in the approach disclosed by Morgan, a job with black/white and color pages is provided. The job is separated on the basis of color so that the black/white part of the job is delivered to a black/white printing system and the color part of the job is delivered to a full process color machine. Preferably, color prints, corresponding with the color part of the job, are delivered to a sheet inserter so that the color prints can be inserted into a stream of black/white prints corresponding with the black/white part of the job.
Other distributed printing models are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,574,831 to Grenda (Issued: Nov. 12, 1996) and U.S. Pat. No. 5,596,416 to Barry et al. (Issued: Jan. 21, 1997). In particular, the '831 patent discloses a print array having an electronic image control device communicating with both first and second printer engines. Image data is routed from the second printer engine to the first printer engine when a failed status signal is provided by the second printer engine to the electronic image control device.
Both the above-mentioned Lobiondo patent and the Morgan article directly or indirectly address the concept of classifying a job in accordance with one or more attributes of the job. Describing a job in terms of job level and/or page level attributes is considered, in some detail, by the disclosure of U.S. Pat. No. 5,181,162 to Smith et al. (Issued: Jan. 19, 1993). The Smith patent discloses an object oriented document management and production system in which documents are represented as collections of logical components or "objects" that may be combined and physically mapped into a page-by-page layout. Stored objects are organized, accessed and manipulated through a database management system.
The concept of managing a job on the basis of its attributes is further disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,467,434 to Hower Jr. et al. (Issued: Nov. 14, 1995) and U.S. Pat. No. 5,450,571 to Rosekrans et al. (Issued: Sep. 12, 1995). Each of the Hower and Rosekrans patents illustrate systems which use servers having multiple queue capability. Moreover, U.S. Pat. No. 5,129,639 to DeHority (Issued Jun. 14, 1992) discloses a system which permits interactive communication between a client and a server when the server is unable, because of an attribute mismatch, to fulfill the requirements of the client's job.
The advantage of using one or more queues in a printing process has been demonstrated by U.S. Pat. No. 4,947,345 to Paradise et al. (Issued Aug. 7, 1990). Paradise discloses a system in which copy/print jobs are delivered to an output queue which communicates with a printer while Fax jobs are delivered to a hold queue which communicates with the output queue. In practice, after a certain number of Fax jobs have accumulated in the hold queue, they are delivered to the output queue in such a manner that the Fax jobs are printed ahead of all jobs currently residing in the output queue. Another queue arrangement for a printing system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,206,735 to Gauronski et al.
As illustrated by U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,450,571 and 5,467,434, multiple queues can be advantageously to distribute jobs across a network printing system. It is believed that currently available systems build on the systems of the '571 and '434 patents by partitioning the various queues into sub-queues so that RIPped jobs are stored in one sub-queue, jobs to be printed are stored in another sub-queue, and so on. Moreover, any given sub-queue can include a substantial number of print jobs. Accordingly, the queue structure associated with any given queue can be quite complex and substantial in size.
As can be appreciated by those skilled in the art of queue design, opening up a queue with subqueues and performing operations relative to the sub-queues on a graphic user interface ("GUI") is not necessarily a trivial task. Moreover, complexity is compounded when two queues with their attendant sub-queues are displayed on a single GUI screen for performing such operations as moving one or more jobs from a sub-queue of a first queue to a sub-queue of a second queue. The performance of these sorts of operations, however, is essential when the printer or printers associated with the first queue goes "offline" or the number of jobs in one or more of the sub-queues of the first or second queue become imbalanced relative to other available queues within the network printing system.
In Microsoft's Windows operating system ("Windows" is a trademark of Microsoft, Inc.) a job can be moved from a first drive to a second drive without actually opening either drive. This sort of movement system is appropriate provided a user does not care about the contents of the drive in which the moved job will be received. Where, however, movement of a source job is contingent on an understanding as to the contents of the destination location, simply typing out a move command for moving the source job to a destination drive is simply insufficient. Thus, it would be desirable to provide a graphically based system that permits one or more jobs to be moved from a source queue to a destination queue in such a manner that the user is provided with a graphic indication as to the contents of the source and/or destination queues without actually opening either queue.
The present invention employs network capability to achieve various advantageous ends. The following discussion is intended to provide a background for any appropriate network implementation required by the disclosed embodiment below:
Examples of some recent patents relating to network environments of plural remote terminal shared users of networked printers include Xerox Corporation U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,243,518, 5,226,112, 5,170,340 and 5,287,194. Some patents on this subject by others include U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,113,355, 5,113,494 (originally filed Feb. 27, 1987), 5,181,162, 5,220,674, 5,247,670; 4,953,080 and 4,821,107. Further by way of background, some of the following Xerox Corporation U.S. patents also include examples of networked systems with printers: 5,153,577; 5,113,517; 5,072,412; 5,065,347; 5,008,853; 4,947,345; 4,939,507; 4,937,036; 4,920,481; 4,914,586; 4,899,136; 4,453,128; 4,063,220; 4,099,024; 3,958,088; 3,920,895; and 3,597,071. Also noted are IBM Corp. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,651,278 and 4,623,244, and Canon U.S. Pat. No. 4,760,458 and Japan. Pub. No. 59-63872 published Nov. 4, 1984. Some of these various above patents also disclose multi-functional or integral machines [digital scanner/facsimile/printer/copiers] and their controls.
Some other network system related publications include "Xerox Office Systems Technology"" . . . Xerox 8000 Series Products: Workstations, Services, Ethernet, and Software Development" .COPYRGT.1982, 1984 by Xerox Corporation, OSD-R8203A, Ed. T. Linden and E. Harslem, with a "Table of Contents" citing its numerous prior publications sources, and an Abstract noting the April 1981 announcement of "the 8110 Star Information System, A New Personal Computer . . . "; "Xerox System Integration Standard Printing Protocol XSIS 118404", April 1984; "Xerox Integrated Production Publishers Solutions: . . . " Booklet No. "610P50807" "11/85"; "Printing Protocol-Xerox System Integration Standard" .COPYRGT.1990 by Xerox Corporation, XNSS 119005 May 1990; "Xerox Network Systems Architecture", "General Information Manual", XNSG 068504 April 1985, with an extensive annotated bibliography, .COPYRGT.1985 by Xerox Corporation; "Interpress: The Source Book", Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, N.Y., 1988, by Harrington, S. J. and Buckley, R. R.; Adobe Systems Incorporated "PostScript.RTM. Language Reference Manual", Addison-Wesley Co., 1990; "Mastering Novell.RTM. Netware.RTM.", 1990, SYBEX, Inc., Alameda, Calif., by Cheryl E. Currid and Craig A. Gillett; "Palladium Print System" .COPYRGT.MIT 1984, et sec; "Athena85" "Computing in Higher Education: The Athena Experience", E. Balkovich, et al, Communications of the ACM, 28(11) pp. 1214-1224, November, 1985; and "Apollo87" "The Network Computing Architecture and System: An Environment for Developing Distributed Applications", T. H. Dineen, et al, Usenix Conference Proceedings, June 1987.
Noted regarding commercial network systems with printers and software therefor is the 1992 Xerox.RTM. Corporation "Network Publisher" version of the 1990 "DocuTech.RTM." publishing system, including the "Network Server" to customer's Novell.RTM. 3.11 networks, supporting various different network protocols and "Ethernet"; and the Interpress Electronic Printing Standard, Version 3.0, Xerox System Integration Standard XNSS 048601 (January 1986). Also, the much earlier Xerox.RTM. Corporation "9700 Electronic printing System"; the "VP Local Laser Printing" software application package, which, together with the Xerox.RTM. "4045" or other Laser Copier/Printer, the "6085" "Professional Computer System" using Xerox Corporation "ViewPoint" or "GlobalView.RTM." software and a "local printer [print service] Option" kit, comprises the "Documenter" system. The even earlier Xerox.RTM. Corporation "8000" "Xerox Network Services Product Descriptions" further describe other earlier Xerox.RTM. Corporation electronic document printing systems. Eastman Kodak "LionHeart.RTM." systems, first announced Sep. 13, 1990, are also noted.
Current popular commercial published "systems software" including LAN workstation connections includes Novell.RTM. DOS 7.0, "Windows.RTM." NT 3.1, and IBM OS/2 Version 2.1.
Disclosures of all of the patents cited and/or discussed above in this Background are incorporated herein by reference.